I was thinking I should shovel the first winter snow, but I am too lazy to get out in the cold. I’ll just let Mother Nature shovel my driveway. She can do a better job than I can on my most conscientious days.

I was thinking I should run for president in 2020, but then I don’t have the gumption to be Leader of the Free World and Master of the Universe. Moreover, I hate compromising my principles and lying a thousand times a day. Thus, I am content being the president of my soapbox.

I was thinking about going back to school to learn new things, but not only it is too expensive, I don’t want to hang around teenage students who will call me “Grandpa” (I don’t have any grandkids, but I have been a great-great uncle for a couple of years–sigh, I am getting closer and closer to geezerdom) and will spend all day taking selfies of each other. Besides, I look ridiculous hanging around a frat house (though I wouldn’t mind hanging around a sorority house and conducting a panty raid), wearing a raccoon coat, and saying phrases like “twenty-three skidoo, MFer”. If I want to expand my mind intellectually, I’ll enroll in the School of the Real World, visit libraries and museums, surf the Internet, and study the supermarket tabloids (by reading the front pages of the Globe and the National Enquirer, you will encounter a lot of titillating information about the rich and famous you never learned in school or the evening news).

I was thinking about going to the casino to get rich quick. But casinos are like Tootsie Pop factories–they’re for suckers. I get claustrophobic being around gamblers who sit around slot machines for hours, smoke like a broken down steam engine, and curse worse than seasick sailors in a submarine. I will just have to be content I probably won’t be a rich man because I didn’t earn my money the old fashioned way–inheriting it.

I was thinking about joining the circus. Unfortunately, with the demise of Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey, there aren’t that many circuses to join anymore. I’m too fat to be an acrobat; I am too much of a coward to tame circus lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!); and I don’t want to wear leotards in public. Of course, I could be a clown because I am a naturally clownish type of guy; however, I am too embarrassed to look like Bozo or Ronald McDonald. I also could be a circus freak like the Elephant Man. But I don’t want to wear tattoos like Lydia the Tattooed Lady, grow another body limb, or get pelted with tomatoes and rotten eggs from jaded tank town audiences. Whenever a circus comes to town, I definitely won’t be performing in the Greatest Show on Earth.

To think or think, that is question. And I have decided to think. The weather is lousy, the excitement of the holiday season is long over, my dog wants a walk around the neighborhood, and I am in no mood to write anymore.

See me with Rodin’s The Thinker.

Joe’s Maybe Memorable Quote of the Day

Thinking is like watching baseball–it is the art of pondering inaction.